Really Very Crunchy: A Beginner's Guide to Removing Toxins from Your Life without Adding Them to Your Personality

by Emily Morrow

I guess I’m trying to say that you can remove toxins from your life without adding them to your personality.

You don’t learn how to make homemade marshmallows from beef gelatin by accident, after all.

An unbalanced approach to life isn’t usually a happy one, no matter what the situation is.

smash your garlic ten minutes before you add it to dishes to maximize its benefits.

The biggest sacrifice I’ve had to make is spending less time consuming entertainment and more time making and doing, but there’s an immense satisfaction in seeing what you’re able to create, and the money saved is worth the extra work.

The Easiest Crunchy Things You Can Do on the Cheap Get outside in the sunshine for fifteen minutes in the morning. Add a pinch of salt and a squeeze of lemon to your water. Take a walk after meals. Bring your own grocery bags to the store. Learn to belly breathe. Go to bed earlier. Choose joy.

“Our society is much more interested in information than wonder, in noise rather than silence.”

I’ve also had great success by typing into a search engine “nontoxic swap for __________.”

The goal of healthy eating isn’t to deprive yourself of all the things you love, but rather to shift your relationship with food and enlighten yourself on truly nourishing your body rather than merely feeding it.

You can check wwoofusa.org (wwoof.net for the rest of the world) to find an organic farm that you can contact.

Trying to choose healthier options doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

Cotton, linen, silk, wool, and hemp are fibers produced from plants or animals. I prefer to choose fibers that don’t require a lot of pesticides to grow: wool, linen, and hemp.

Fabrics You Should Avoid Polyester—Made of plastic and treated with tons of toxic chemicals, including forever chemicals, that rub off on your skin Acrylic—Made of plastic, known to shed microplastics easily Rayon—Treated with toxic chemicals and, like all synthetic materials, very bad for the environment to produce Acetate—Requires extensive chemical processing Nylon—Petroleum-based fiber that receives a laundry list of chemical treatments

Want the short answer on how to remove toxins from your life without adding them to your personality? Go to sleep.

One of the beautiful things about allowing our children to be bored is that it allows them to master creativity.

“Humans are not meant to wake up in a box and stare at boxes, eat out of boxes, drive to work to work in a box, while staring at boxes, going home to our boxes to stare at more boxes all day. This is not normal and humans are not meant to live like this.”11All these boxes are causing us to miss the breathtaking displays that God has given us through nature to mark the passage of time. If you want to start thinking outside the box, step outside and wonder at the intricacies of nature.

My favorite sources for searching nontoxic beauty products are www.thefiltery.com and www.ewg.org.

You can’t choose your physical flaws, but you can choose your personality strengths.

“use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without”

I want to teach my kids to be good stewards of what they have, using everything to its fullest potential.

There may be a fine line between “not wasting” and hoarding, but I’m not sure where it is.

Being crunchy is about making the best decisions you can make with the resources available to you. That applies to a million little things—the air quality in your home, the food you buy for your family, the way you parent your children—and it’s important to give yourself some space and grace to find balance.

Overall, people who label themselves as lonely die younger and have more chronic diseases.

What is the point of trying to live a healthier life if all it does is isolate you? Don’t allow the desire to be toxin-free consume you so much it cuts you off from the rest of the world.

But what is so funny, so ironic, is that stress is far more damaging than any of the things I get anxious and stressed about.

During those moments, I take a big, deep breath and pray, “Holy God, I surrender this worry to you. Your will be done over this.” I cannot control every aspect of this life, so I have to stop trying. I can only make educated decisions. I then look at my situation and ask, “What is true right now, in this very moment?” The truth is my children are healthy, I am healthy, and we are safe. You can only do what you can do, and that’s enough.

Don’t allow an attitude of negativity, anxiety, or superiority become more toxic than the toxins you are trying to remove from your life.

We can all agree that it’s better for us to be outside enjoying fresh air than it is to be stuck indoors, staring at a screen. We can all agree that it’s better to think about the choices you make rather than to blindly do what you’re told.

I want you to know that you don’t have to be “crunchy” to think for yourself.

In short, the crunchiest things you can do are think for yourself, do the best you can, and show love to your fellow human beings.